(This is a long post. I'm hoping to help my fellow tire neophytes.)

I registered on this site specifically to thank those who have posted in this thread for their comments. The reviews I've read here convinced me to have a set of four Yokohama AVID ENVigor 195/55 16s installed on my Silver 2005 MCS.

When I purchased the car back in 2006 (second owner, I am), it had the original Dunlop Sport 7000 run-flats. Since then, I've stuck with the same brand, but switching to 5000s and ditching the RFs in hopes of a less spine-shattering ride. While this latest set began putting me sideways (wheeee!) in a couple of Houston's underpass U-turn lanes, I had the car lowered about an inch with some very slightly stiffer springs. Predictably, the ride got a tad harsher, but I knew I'd be replacing the rubber soon.

Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment and my chiropractor is only half a block from home.

I purchased the Yokohamas from TireRack.com yesterday, and they were at my local NTB today! I just drove home and am glad I did my homework before this purchase. When I left the shop and turned onto the street, my newfound comfort made my teeth happy, but also had me worried that I'd be sliding through corners again. I took the first 90-degree turn at a decent speed and pointed toward lane one. Complete control. Wow, that was fun! Cornering has never before been like this! And the road noise is GONE! I thought back to a MINI event I'd never had the grapes to try... I now have a browser tab open to the MOTD 2011 homepage and am actually considering it. This is what driving a MINI is all about!

Before today, I never gave much thought to tires. They were all the same. Rotate, align, inflate, replace. I never realized that the characteristics of the car could be improved this drastically with the change to a different brand of tire.

Thanks again to everyone who has posted on this topic. You made my decision easy and I'm happy with the outcome. (damn... now I'm gonna get a speeding ticket. i just know it.)


Cheers,

-Daniel

2005 MINI Cooper S with a Pure Silver dinner jacket with black stripes
Mini Madness strut tower reinforcement plates
K&N Filter element
Driver's-side Euro parcel shelf
Plushed out
Gold-leaf
Phantom top
and three girls waiting

 

HoooRah Daniel! My sentiments exactly...

 

I just wanted to wish this thread a happy one year anniversary.

 

Sorry to repeat what has already been stated. I chose these for my 2007 S and love them so far. The ride is soo much smoother and quieter than. the standard Conti's. I am so glad I ditched the run flats

 

Here's an interesting update that I would like to here others chime in on

As of 5k miles on my tires the ride has developed a noticeable vibration and shimmy in the steering wheel when turning.

I brought it in to MINI and after taking a drive the MA said it was because the tires were no longer run flats and the edges have scalloped.

After getting out of the car he pointed this out to me on the fronts and I was shocked to see that he was right. Weirdest thing, I've been taking care of them and constantly checking tire pressure but alas it happened.

The MA told me that it was down to the softer sidewall of the tires and that the aggressive suspension and camber of the MINI that chews through the softer rubber of a normal tire.

I'm going to have them rotated back to front next week and re-aligned. Hopefully that will work out for a little while longer and get rid of the weird shimmying through the steering wheel until I can figure out something to do.

Has anyone else had anything like this happen?

 

if that's occuring at only 5k I would guess that you need an alignment....BAD!

 

I had an alignment when I got them put on and its the craziest thing to think that I need one after only 5k miles.

I've got to call Greasy's tomorrow about it.

 

Keep posting, I want to hear how this turns out!

 

Ok, So earlier I went out and checked the tires by hand since it was dark out and from what I could feel the insides of the fronts are the worst and that the outsides of the rears are the best.

I am thinking that maybe to get rid of the shimmying and to even out the tires that I can rotate them in a particular way.

I want to move the fronts to the back BUT and hang with me, BUT while moving the front wheels to the back, changing what sides they are on while keeping the tread going the same direction.
And move the rears to the front while doing the same thing, changing sides while keeping the tread the same direction.
That may seem confusing so I made a chart that should be easy to follow what I'm getting at.

I am thinking this because the camber is most aggressive on the insides in my opinion and they are showing more wear than the outsides while doing normal driving like on the highway, Which I am doing.

Hopefully this will maybe even out the tires enough to get rid of the shimmy and some of the noise.


Ahhh Excel, what can't you do

 

So I've had mine on for awhile now. I had the Envigors on my car for 2 months before switching over to snowtires. I've now had the Envigors back on my car for about a month. So I'm pretty sure the tires are sufficiently worn in now.

The first thing I noticed when I switched from my 15" snowtires back to the 17" S-lites and Envigors was that the Envigors are a fairly lightweight tire. My previous summer tires were much heavier and it could be felt in the handling of the car. The Envigor combination was not a whole lot heavier than my snowtires so going back was not a big difference in handling weight feel. This is a good thing. Previous years, going from snowtires back to my summer tires, there was a bit of an adjustment to be made in my driving. It also snowed after I switched over and the "all-season" feature was nice to have.

Last week, a couple of MINIs from the local MINI clubs made a run from Vancouver up the Sea-to-Sky highway towards Whistler. This is one of those "must drive" motoring highways with lots of very sharp left-right turn combinations with great rhythm. We did the run fairly spirited. Though the handling was very stable, I felt at the extremes, I was getting pretty close to the grip limits of the Envigors. The good thing is they give way gradually. For an all-season tire, I would say they grip is very good. But not as good as an ultra-high performance (UHP) summer only tire. The wet weather grip is also very good so for the Vancouver BC area where we get more rainy days than sunny days, this tire suits this area very well. However, I would probably not use it in the autocross or track as there are better tires for that purpose.

The Envigors have a very high UTQG rating so the tires are supposed to last a long time. However, our MINIs appear to have a bit of negative camber in the rear wheels and if you have a stiffer rear swaybar, you will notice some odd tire wear on the inside (of the car) tread blocks, similar to what Peter314 is describing. I would highly recommend rotating front to back, at the very least, annually. This will compromise ultimate grip a bit, but I don't think these tires are about ultimate grip anyways.

Overall, I am quite pleased with these tires.

Of note regarding this wear pattern only happening because the tires are non-runflats. My car came with Pirelli Euphori@'s and the inside sidewalls literally came apart from the tire itself. So I'm thinking the same thing does happen, but the results are quite different. Maybe we MINI drivers are just corning to hard.

 

I'm approaching 19K on mine, and while I've not really noticed any unusual wear (mine's a Justa so I'm naturally less agressive in cornering ).

What I am noticing is that the tires are a bit more prone to a whine or hum as they wear.

Given the current wear pattern, I'm guessing that I'll be back in the tire market somewhere between 36K and 48K miles.

Not bad.

The stock run-flats -- bless their little pointy heads, er, uh, somethings -- had some pretty good feathering on the outside edges when I took them off at around 12K. My best guess is that they would not have made it to 18K miles.

I rotate the tires front to back every 4000 miles and they seem to be wearing very evenly.

I have absolutely no vibration up to about 85 - 90 mph. Any vibration after that is more likely to to be my hands on the steering wheel. I really did go 90 once -- really.

(Keep in Mind, its an air-conditioned, automatic Justa so 85 really is an adventure, and much over 90 is just not gonna happen in my lifetime).

 

If I'm thinking about what you're saying properly you will have to take the tires of of the rims and rebalance them - so put the left rear tire on the front right rim - and vice versa....same thing for the other side. (b/c they are directional tires)

Not sure if it's worth the ~$80 to do that this late in your tire's life....but that's up to you...

 

yea, that is what I am thinking.

Considering how they are after 5k and they are suppose to last ~40k then I think it may be worth the $50 that greasy's charges, considering that it technically is early in the tires life.

If it may help out the issue then I'd say its well worth it. But I've got to talk to him before I'll do anything, he may be able to chime in on the subject better than what I am speculating.

 

I want to thank the posters on this thread, I just ordered the Yokos and the feedback here was super helpful. BTW, where can I buy a dummy spare?? Anyhow, thanks all. Lili

 

I just returned from Minis on the Dragon as a Newbee. I now have 8 dragon runs under my belt. I have a 2011 MCS R57 with the Sport package. I picked it up in November and immediately put on a set of Blizzaks on 16" wheels. With that setup, the Mini is a decent winter car. Did I mention I live in Wisconsin. My Chevy Avalanche is available when the snow really flies, but i drive the MINI 95% of the winter days.

I switched out my wheels the week before I left for the Dragon - 17" stock run flats. Running the dragon with those tires was not pretty. They now have 3000 miles and they will be off before they hit 4,000.

There hasn't been much discussion in this thread about the Tire Rack Review that compares the Firestone Precision Sport, Michelin Pilot Exalto A/S, Sumitomo HTR A/S P01 (H&V), and the Yokohama AVID ENVigor (H&V). The AVID tied the HTR. But what really impressed me is the AVID is far and away the best tire in the test on wet pavement.

http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tests/...y.jsp?ttid=129

Of my 8 Dragon runs, the run that made me the most nervous was when it was raining. As a Wisconsin boy that grew up in slippery conditions, I'm a lot more concerned about performance in unfavorable conditions than in favorable conditions.

So I'm going to order a set of AVID Envigors. I'll run them 8 months out of the year and switch to the Blizzaks when the snow flies.

Next year when I return to the Dragon, I'll be running a much better set of street tires. I'll have at least a rear sway bar. I don't want to drop my Mini as it will be even more of a snowplow than it is already. So those may be the only suspension mods I make. There are plenty of twisties in Wisconsin to check out the effect of suspension/tire upgrades.

Maybe next year I'll be able to stay with some of the hard core Mini drivers.

Anyway, thank you for all the work that has gone into this thread.

Tom

 

I bought mine from http://www.detroittuned.com and it has been on sale for a while. I have never had to use it luckily but it should work fine. I carried it to the Dragon last week just in case and it fits nicely in the boot.

I just returned from my 2nd year at the Dragon. Last year I had the Continental Runflats and they squealed and broke loose a lot! This year I went with my new Yokohama Avid Envigor's. Night and Day difference!! They never squealed and held unbelievable! Usually when accelerating out of a curve hard you had to feather those runflats as they spun. These Yokos never spun in the curve no matter how hard I accelerated. Love them more now!!

Kevin

 

Kevin
thanks!!! will buy!
i also bought a pkg of slime.

tire-rack just delivered my tires
i hope i can stay out of traffic court now!!

many many thanks for the advice!
lili

 

I took off my runflats about a week ago and put on the Avid Envigors. I am very happy with them so far. The car feels so much better. I ordered a spare to keep on trips too. The runflats were such a pain to me because no one would service them here.

 

 

They stuck like glue, were hard & heavy...going to Non-RF (have a spare)
2006 mini cooper running Nokian Hakka RSI in winter...mileage 105,000 kms (60,000miles) safety main concern, wet braking & handling....
Considering 3 tires (195/55R6,205/50R16 size).....
Nokian eNTYRE; Falken ZE912; Yokohama AVID Envigor.......

 

I have now had my ENVigor V's (215/45/17) on my '02 MCS for about 10 months, ~8000 miles. I ran them through the winter and they did OK, not the best all season tire I've experienced but far from the worst. Being a "V" rated high performance all season tire vs an "S" or "T" rated touring tire probably has a lot to do with this. Other than only being on OK in the snow, these tires have been fantastic! Very good grip in both wet and dry driving conditions, they are VERY quiet and smooth, and are showing no sign of abnormal wear, they still look new. I highly recommend these tires to anyone who doesn't want deal with running two sets of tires (winter/summer), these are a great year round choice.

 

I too have researched this until my eyes became crossed. Today I ordered, through Tire Rack, 4 Enkei Performance T fork rims (18.6 pds each) with ENVigor 205/45/17s. Will replace the OEM run flats as soon as these arrive (being delivered to an awesome tire shop). l will keep you posted. My question to you at this point is that my 06 MCS run flats should be inflated at 35 PSI, should I maintain the same psi with the ENVigors? This site is a huge help, can't thank everyone enough.

 

I agree with this, I ran them this winter and I was expecting more but was at least pleased with the performance. During the last few months of warmer weather they have been interesting I must say, I believe mine were wearing abnormally because I have some slight scalloping on the front outside edge that was causing a shimmy through the wheel, I had them rebalanced and rotated back to front and the shimmying is gone.

They are much softer than the Run flats and much more quiet but I only have about 5500 miles on them now.

Not too crazy about the drop in mileage I have seen. They seem to have more rolling resistance because I have lost at least 3 mpg on the highway and 7 in the city since putting these on; and this is running them at 45psi. the city mileage seems to have suffered a lot tho.
then again I went with 215/45/17 so that could be a contributing factor.

If they need to get replaced I may look into them again but in the smaller 205/45/17 size.

I ran them at 40 psi like I did my runflats and they felt sluggish and my mileage was suffering (for me at least) so I couldn't imagine running them at 36 psi. As I said above I'm running mine at 45 Psi; but then again this is my first set of non runflat tires so I may not be the best to take from.

 

I think 45 psi cold is too high of a tire pressure to run. For rhe r56 with 17"rims, the suggested tire pressure is 38 psi. I think at that pressure, the ride is quite rough already. I run mine typically around 36-37 psi for runflats to compensate for the rough ride. For non runflats all seasons, I run 38-39 psi because of the softer side walls.

At 45 psi, you can lose contact patch because the tire can be crowned in the middle, making it lose traction especially in the wet and snow.

Also, what psi is the tire when it is hot, after a good run? The tire would have a max psi rating on the sidewalls that you should not exceed.

 

It's not like I haven't thought of these before, and your points are all valid; So far the tires are wearing (contact patch) evenly. I check the tread depth every month taking multiple measurements across the width of the tire and they all are in check with each other so far. Also the tires have a max of 51 psi and I have checked the pressure after a "good run" if you know what I mean and I've seen them as high as 49 psi, high yes, but still under specifications. As the temperature though has been rising I have been compensating by lowering them. I think right now they are at cold 43 Psi
It's weird you say that the tire would be crowned in the middle at this pressure where when I look at it the tires seem to be nice and evenly flat along the width and the side walls are nice and straight up where as with a lower pressure the tires sag due to (relative) under inflation and the side walls are bulging outwards.